A woman was arrested for drunken driving near Buffalo, NY, but in a curious twist, she was able to prove that she had not drunk any alcohol, her body was making its own alcohol. She has what doctors call auto-brewery syndrome, also called gut fermentation syndrome, where her gastrointestinal system turns food into alcohol.
When the woman was arrested in 2014, she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.33%, which is more than four times the legal limit. The 35-year-old teacher, who has not been named publicly, had been driving erratically when police pulled her over. She failed several breath tests and other field sobriety tests and was arrested.
But a town judge in the town of Hamburg dismissed the woman's drunken-driving charges this month after her lawyer presented a doctor's research showing she had a condition in which high levels of yeast in her intestines ferment high-carbohydrate foods into alcohol. The rare condition was first documented in the 1970s in Japan.
"At first glance, it seems like a get-out-of-jail-free card," Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told the Associated Press. "But it's not that easy. Courts tend to be skeptical of such claims. You have to be able to document the syndrome through recognized testing." He noted that this syndrome is a valid defense in this case only because the woman was not aware of it. People who know they have medical conditions can be liable for failing to take reasonable precautions when they know of their condition
The woman's lawyer, Joseph Marusak, was able to document that the woman could have a high blood-alcohol level without drinking. He arranged for two nurses and a physician's assistant to monitor the woman for a day to document that she drank no alcohol, and to take several blood samples. She was found to have blood alcohol levels of 0.36% despite not drinking. The legal level for driving under the influence in New York is 0.08%.
The condition was first documented in the United States with a case study published in 2013 of a 61-year-old man who had been having episodes of drunkenness without drinking liquor.
